The major difference between service-oriented architecture and microservices architecture is the fact that, in a service-oriented architecture, the application consists of different services, each providing the functionality to work on one of the business domains of an organization. These services communicate with each other through the use of the enterprise service bus, which routes the messages from one service to another while also providing a common format for message exchange.

In the case of microservices, the application will consist of a number of small microservices, where each microservice is responsible for providing only a single functionality that may not map to a complete domain of an organization and may just be a subset of larger problem domain. These microservices communicate with each other through the use of APIs exposed by the individual microservices or through the use of stateless message routers that allow the delivery of messages from one service to another.